Our Mission: Enhance the presence, mood, and functionality of architecturally designed spaces through highlights, color, and shadows.
Ryan Brown, IES, Assoc. IALD, Assoc. AIA
Principal
Lighting design is a necessary and desirable discipline. Lighting defines spaces, clarifies their interrelationships, reinforces their progression and movement, heightens the visual attributes of their materials, and creates the appropriate atmosphere for their intended function. Rebar Lighting Design combines technical experience, artistry, strategic insight, and management expertise to deliver quality design and service.
Rebar is a unique partnership between Erika and Ryan Brown, an espoused team that provides Architectural Lighting Design Consultation Services for architects, landscape architects, interior designers, engineers, developers, facility managers, retail and office planners, and end users who require skilled lighting design.
They tap their combined knowledge of architecture and lighting design to enhance the presence, mood, and functionality of architecturally designed spaces through highlights, color, and shadows. Both believe lighting design should complement and enrich the elements that give a built environment its character. Rebar collaborates with other professionals—architects, interior designers, landscape architects, and engineers—to ensure clients receive bespoke design solutions.
While each earned Architectural degrees at Philadelphia University, Erika focused on creating healthy interior and exterior spaces for both inhabitants and the local environment and Ryan concentrated on the many ways to create uniquely lucid experiences for building occupants.
Before founding Rebar, they further developed their competencies, knowledge, and responsibilities within other organizations. Starting in 2013, Erika was a project architect and manager specializing in corporate interiors with Studio 1200. Ryan joined Robert Newell Lighting Design in 2012 and benefitted from years of mentorship, absorbing Robert's design philosophy and techniques. Erika and Ryan’s varied proficiencies fortify Rebar with a breadth of knowledge rare among its peers.
Whether clients' needs are straightforward or complex, Rebar creates cohesive, illuminated environments that are aesthetic and functional for their architecture, interiors, and landscapes. As demonstrated through its diverse portfolio, Rebar Lighting Design can elevate any space.
Rebar projects include residential, corporate, healthcare, places of worship, hospitality, educational, institutional, building façade, and landscape lighting. Rebar respects Client budgets and scheduling constraints while embracing our collective environmental responsibility by utilizing current technologies to reduce energy consumption. The lighting design services Rebar provides are those which best fit the client’s unique needs, from on-call lighting design consultation through full-service contracts.
Commitment to our Environment:
Erika Brown, Assoc. AIA
Principal | Operating Officer
Rebar Lighting Design takes climate change and the environmental impact of the construction industry very seriously. While Rebar is not classified as a "green" company, we do our best to reduce our environmental impact through our project specifications, design philosophy, and work environment.
Project specifications are our biggest opportunity to reduce our and our clients' carbon footprint. We review the latest technologies against our Clients' needs and provide solutions that maximize their goals and energy efficiency. Lighting components come from all over the world, and while it's nearly impossible to avoid specifying products with international components, Rebar chooses to source the majority of our specifications within the United States to minimize shipping distances. We suggest quality products to our clients, which reduces future landfill volumes. Keeping electronic technology out of landfills helps to preserve our groundwater quality and reduces the need to expand human industry in the wild places of the world.
Rebar's design philosophy is, in short, to put light where light is needed. This mantra allows us to effectively illuminate and accentuate spaces and facades when projects are in Dark Sky zones, along animal migration routes, and on coasts where nocturnal animals are highly affected by bright lights. The strategic placement of lighting also allows our clients to reduce their electric operating loads, which in turn reduces their energy consumption for years to come.
Rebar practices what we preach: From our IT, to policies, and to our goals for the future, Rebar keeps environmental sustainability top of mind. We reduce E-waste by purchasing equipment second-hand (when feasible) or repairing existing equipment, by running our servers in the cloud, and by collaborating in a paperless work environment. The majority of our client meetings and day-to-day activities are done remotely, which reduces transportation emissions and gives time back to our clients and employees. Our office is lit with energy-efficient LED lighting and aspires to operate fully on electricity generated with solar/wind energies by 2025.
Commitment to our Employees:
Rebar Lighting Design is invested in our employees' professional development and personal fulfillment. Rebar employees can make their own schedules, shift hours around the rest of their lives, take relevant courses on the company's dime, and can elect to work remotely or from the office. Rebar happily offers Family Leave benefits beyond the state and federal requirements. Lastly, our PTO policy exceeds industry standards and required minimums. Why? Because happy people perform better than unhappy people; happy people are keen to learn and are comfortable asking for new opportunities/responsibilities; happy people tend to remain with their company, thus reducing training efforts and boosting company expertise. Flexible policies provide opportunities for parents, students, and socio-economically disadvantaged people to continue or change their professional journey. Rebar Lighting Design hopes to inspire other small businesses and looks to become a case study proving that all employers can provide job security, appropriate monetary compensation, and ample time off.
Zachary Humbert
Jr. Lighting Designer
